§ Captain SPENDER CLAYasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether any figures dealing with the hop acreages and yields for the quinquennium, 1853–9, were laid before the Select Committee on the Hop Industry; and, if so, will he give the figures for the five years in question, and state if the yield per acre then was greater or less than that of the quinquennium 1905–9?
§ Sir E. STRACHEYMr. Graham Aldous, who gave evidence before the Select Committee, put in a table which had been given to him by a very large firm of hop merchants, giving an estimate of the acreage under hops and the average growth per acre in each year from 1807 to 1884. The table is printed as an appendix to the Report of the Committee, but we do not feel justified in making use of the figures for purposes of comparison with the Official Returns, which were first collected in 1885.